High quality medical sensing and imaging data has become important in the diagnoses and treatment of a variety of medical conditions include those related to conditions associated with the digestive system, conditions related to the cardiocirculatory system, injuries to the nervous system, cancer, and the like. Current sensing and therapeutic devices suffer from various disadvantages due to a lack of sophistication related to the sensing, imaging, and therapeutic functions. One of these disadvantages is that such devices are unable to achieve direct or conformal contact with the part of the body being measured or treated. The inability to achieve direct or conformal contact of such devices is partially attributable to the rigid nature of the devices and accompanying circuitry. This rigidity prevents devices from coming into conforming and/or direct contact with human tissue, which as is readily apparent, may change shape and size, and may be soft, pliable, curved, and/or irregularly shaped. Such rigidity thus compromises accuracy of measurements and effectiveness of treatment. Thus, devices, systems and methods that employ flexible and/or stretchable systems would be desirable.
Examples of categories that are amenable to such flexible and/or stretchable approaches include endoscopy, vascular examination and treatment, neurological treatment and examination, tissue screening, cardiac ablation and mapping, conformal external tissue sensing and mapping among others. Controlled drug delivery as well a controlled delivery therapy such as ablation would also benefit from highly integrated stretchable electronics as will be demonstrated herein.